Union steps up pressure to save jobs

Union organizers and their City Hall supporters bought more time Friday trying to reverse the planned layoffs and pay cuts for city clerks and health care workers scheduled to start next week.

With the backing of Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and a board majority, another public hearing will be held Tuesday, followed by a supervisors’ vote on five pieces of legislation related to the proposed $7 million bailout.

The money would prevent more than 100 layoffs and hundreds more workers from pay reductions and job reassignments.

The proposal fell one vote shy of passage at the full board earlier this week.

The politically influential Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents the workers, has teamed up with its allies in elective office to step up pressure. A planned tactic: Sending campaign-like mailers featuring San Francisco’s state representatives to liberal Democratic voters citywide urging them to lobby City Hall to pass the proposed spending plan.

The Chronicle

Supervisor Sophie Maxwell: the swing vote.

The union’s focus is on Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, considered to be the swing vote who earlier this week bucked the union’s demand when the matter was first up for consideration. Maxwell said Friday afternoon that she plans to hold firm — unless she is presented with new information that can assure her the proposal is fiscally prudent and won’t bust the precariously balanced city budget.

For now, the money would come out of the city’s $25 million reserve account. ”I don’t want to leave the city in a lurch,” said Maxwell. ”Nothing that I have heard so far has convinced me to change my mind.”

Even if the board does end up approving the funding request, Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose office was the scene of a boisterous union-organized sit-in Thursday, doesn’t have to spend it. The mayor has been sending signals through his chief of staff that there will be no bailout.